Lectures on the Talmud – Berakhot, Volume 2

Rabbi Shagar was known as an outstanding Torah scholar and as an original, groundbreaking thinker whose work touches every realm of Torah. This book, the second volume of his lectures on Tractate Berakhot, contains his lectures on the third and fourth chapters of the tractate. At its center stands the engagement with the topics of prayer, joined by studies of the sugyot on human dignity and on intention in the performance of mitzvot.

Through his unique reading of the Mishnah, the Talmudic sugyot and the words of the Rishonim and Acharonim, Rabbi Shagar connects the discussions that occupy the sources to fundamental questions in the world of the religious person. At the heart of his study of the sugyot lies the question of the nature of prayer, and through it Rabbi Shagar discusses the tension between prayer as supplication and fixed prayer, between spontaneity and inspiration on the one hand and effort and discipline on the other, and between the spiritual service of the individual and partnership with the community.

For more than thirty years Rabbi Shagar devoted most of his time to studying and teaching Gemara. As in other fields, here too he brought his unique language and paved new paths in content and in ways of learning. His lectures combine classic yeshiva scholarship with insights and methods from academic Talmud research and cultural studies, and through their richness and sharpness beats a striving for existential meaning and a search for God.